


held close like a second skin

by clytemnestras



Category: Christian Bible (New Testament), The Wicked + The Divine
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Identity Issues, M/M, Modern Era, Multi, Religious Conflict
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-06-05 19:50:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15178079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clytemnestras/pseuds/clytemnestras
Summary: and they say love is only skin deep(In which it is not old Gods who return to live and die every ninety years, but Christ and his Apostles... and now, for the first time, Mary Magdalene)





	held close like a second skin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kwritten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/gifts).



> for the [ficathon.](https://clockwork-hart1.livejournal.com/33943.html?view=1044631#t1044631) as you can see we really are accepting of all terrible ideas so please do join in!
> 
> (this was supposed to be silly and cracky and it turned into... this)

Everyone knows she is a fraud.

 

There can be only twelve, and Him.

 

Only _The_ Twelve.

 

They may arrive in different bodies, girl bodies, bodies without care for gender or sex or rushing hormones. But they are always the same.

 

Everyone knows she is a fraud.

 

But Mary bites her lip, flips her hair up and walks to the mansion door. She feels very small, exposed in a way she hasn't felt since… since she changed, since she became what she is. Not a woman, nor a saint, but something _other_ anyway.

 

She has her life on her back, the last of her clothes, the things from her art degree, the music she managed to slip away on old CDs and a decade old iPod.

 

She doesn't know what her father did with the rest of her, but she can imagine the scattered things from her bedroom bagged up and hurled in the big black bins three roads away, so no one can tell it came from his house.

 

She doesn't notice until Sarah opens the door that there are tears rolling down her cheeks.

 

*

 

So far, there are eight of them. Peter sits on a plush red sofa, her mass of red curls sitting on her shoulders like fire. Her long grey cardigan reaches her ankles but her shorts only creep over the tops of her thighs. She seems unutterably serious - there's something about her eyes, so old they might evolve into a new mouth, ready to swallow her whole.

 

She's not sure where the rest are. Sarah had led her into the living room and only Peter was there, watching silently.

 

Sarah touches Mary’s wrist and she feels wracked with electric shock.

 

“I had nowhere else to go,” Mary makes her mouth say, fixing Sarah with eyes that used to be brown but have since turned a dark shade of green, flecked with amber, the kind that don't look like they belong to a person. “My parents… I am a heathen to them. Play-acting another faith. Besmirching the name of Allah with my silly teenage games. They won't let me stay in that house anymore.”

 

Sarah touches her cheek gently, and the electricity keeps bubbling away. Her hand is so wrinkled, older than time. The legend says she has been watching over the last three generations. That she has wandered the earth since Abraham. Mary doesn't know what to believe anymore.

 

“Darling,” she says in a hoarse whisper. “You must understand that this is… abnormal. This is not my decision to make. We must ask the others whether they will accept you amongst the ranks, if you truly are who you say.”

 

Mary nods. She hadn't expected open arms, and a chance is more than she has outside these walls.

 

“Let me get you some tea,” Sarah says, stroking once more against her shoulder, before standing and turning away. “Try to relax, dear. The world is full of unexplained things.” She turns back once to look Mary in the eye. “Here, we call them miracles.”

 

*

 

She pretends not to notice as the rest file in. She stares into her tea, watching her reflection shift and change in the rippling water, and the room fills up with heavenly bodies, all thrumming with energy. She never used to look like this. She can't remember the shape of her old face.

 

“Stare any longer and you might fall in.” Someone leans over into her space, cleaves it open like a knife and makes space for himself. She looks up and sees the smile first, the boy sometime after that. _Judas_.

 

“If they were gonna cast anyone aside I think I’d have drawn the short straw.” He laughs quietly, like he isn't really laughing at all. To the rest of them, they must look like a matched set. They have the same bronze skin, the same afro of hair that curves like a medieval halo, the tight curls intermingling. She isn't sure it helps her case.

 

Sarah clears her throat. “Almost ready now, sweetheart. Just waiting on one more.”

 

“And you know what he's like,” Thomas says, grinning wildly, her black hair cutting a lightning bolt across her pale cheek, “Three days late, but carrying coffee.”

 

She doesn't mean to laugh, but Mary does, and it makes Thomas turn her sharp gaze towards her, just like Peter.

 

It makes her waver inside - if that's what they have, what makes them what they are… she doesn't think her eyes have ever been that penetrating. She doesn't think she could see into the soul of a sinner and blink the dirt away.

 

Judas' hand settles on her shoulder, squeezing in time to his own breaths, and she wonders what that means, if it means anything at all.

 

“I brought coffee,” says the voice at the door, a dark mop of hair pulled atop his head, an arrow of stubble above his lip pointing towards a pair of dreadful mirrored sunglasses.

 

Yeshua.

 

“Second coming!” Judas exclaims. “Nice to see you've decided to bless us with your presence.”

 

Mary feels her throat close up, sees a trail of violence in the battle lines of the living room, sees herself cast aside again, because, because…

 

Jesus steps forward and leans into Judas’ space. He makes the sign of the cross on the other boy’s body, and presses his palm to Judas’ lips on the 'Amen.’

 

“There,” he says, “All blessed.”

 

Sarah smiles indulgently at them, then claps her hands together. “We have a matter to attend to. We have a new candidate for the Twelve. And whilst I must say, I have never seen anything quite like it before, I know what we are here to do, and to be. Mary -” She outstretches a hand in her direction. “If you would make your case. Your fate is in their hands.”

 

She makes herself stand, as if her baby doe legs could hold her weight up now, when her world is on fire. She swallows her own spit before she can make her mouth work and from there, it is only white noise.

 

She gets a second of silence, after she gets passed her father's words and the feeling of the burning baptism in her bathtub when she shattered and reformed in the shape of Mary Magdalene. Then chaos erupts.

 

Thomas speaks first. “Centuries of us coming back over and over and _now_ the rules change? We have no reason to believe her.”

 

Judas leans in again, presses his mouth behind her hair. “You see where nicknames come from, don't you?”

 

Peter yells over her, “We are born of miracles, sister. Why _not_ now? We all saw the news, one touch and the cancer began to wither. Only in your wildest dreams could you perform a miracle like that.”

 

Mary feels her face heat. She hadn't really thought it would do anything. She'd just been volunteering on the ward and something had spoken, had asked her to lay her hands on his forehead for a moment and then it possessed her, the power of it, the body wracking shudder from herself to him.

 

A week later and the leukemia was gone.

 

A week later she was another star.

 

Phillip lifts himself from the corner and speaks more like a poet than a sermon. “But which of our brothers will she replace? Do we know what we are losing?”

 

“But we're gaining a sister,” Matthew bites back, running their fingers through the bleached front of their hair.

 

She can't tell who is saying what, who is on her side, who is on no side, who wants to throw her into the sky to see if she flies or plummets but she can tell her stomach is churning and she feels she might vomit the river Nile.

 

She is desperately aware of the touch of Judas’ fingers on the top of her spine.

 

“I just think we should get our facts straight before -”

 

“- But we are God's flock. We believe in people’s truths. We take in those with nowhere else to go.”

 

“But we don't know what she is bringing in. The devil can be anything or anyone -”

 

“Enough.” Jesus speaks, and the room falls to silence. “My Father asks of us that we accept in anyone who requires it. Even if she were the devil, we would house her gladly. That's what we are supposed to teach.” His voice is not warm. He walks over until he is stood before her, holding both hands out. “She will stay in my room for now, if that is what she wants.”

 

Mary nods, takes his hands in her own so she doesn't have to open her mouth and lets his warmth and strength pull her to standing. He draws her into a hug, then uses his thumbs to wipe at the places on her cheeks her tears had moistened before. “History repeats,” he says to her, smiling like she should understand.

 

 _Thank you,_ she thinks instead of saying, because she can't move her body and her mouth at the same time.

 

*

 

His room is not quite what she expected. (It's hard to know what to expect of the world anymore.)

 

The walls are a deep blue, and there are hand drawn notes pinned to them, some are Bible quotes, others from the Dalai Lama, all kinds of spiritual words and guides for goodness. That should be expected. It's the other walls that surprise her. There are hundreds of posters and magazine clippings piled on to the wall, overlapping like a haphazard collage. Bands, film stills, all of it chaotic and vibrant and not quiet at all.

 

He helps ease her bag off of her shoulder and follows the line of her vision to the wall of noise. “Go on then, favourite films and music.”

 

“Open the bag. There's more music in there than clothes. Pan-genre. Would it offend you if I said I would die for Patti Smith?” She realises rather late that it's the first thing she's said to him.

 

He grins broadly. “I fucking love her. If she wants me to die for her sins this time around I’ll happily make an exclusivity deal.”

 

There is a presence to the room, and she can't tell how much is the magic of _Him_ , the aura he exudes, and how much is the boy. She wants to curl up inside it forever.

 

He picks through the CDs she managed to swindle, and then he gets to the art, and if it were anyone else she would grab it back cling it tightly to her body until it synthesised back to her soul. But it's Him. She feels like he had her pegged the second he saw her.

 

He hums quietly, passing his fingers lightly over the charcoal drawings, the sparse watercolours, the pages and pages of pencil sketches. “Do you mind?”

 

She yawns and shakes her head, curling into herself in the place on the bed where he left her as she watches him disassemble her, and she's not sure when it happens, but one moment she's watching his silhouette haloed by the light and then she is blinking into oblivion.

 

*

 

“How is she doing?” A voice asks, somewhere in the depths of dark beyond the dream.

 

“It's been a lot for her, I’d say.” Another voice replies. She's so glad she doesn't have to talk, to roll out of the warm embrace of sleep just yet, just when she was getting comfortable.

 

“There's something about her, isn't there?” She feels the air disturbed beside her, but the warmth remains.

 

“I think I know exactly what you mean.”

 

“The others -”

 

“They need to think about what we are here to do. Our arms should always be opening.”

 

There's a brief scuffle, then. “God, you never change, do you?”

 

“Watch your mouth, brother. There was something rather in vain there.”

 

“Shut up.”

 

The words hit her like a drop in the ocean, ripples rolling her into a deeper slumber.

 

*

 

When she wakes up she is alone in the room, and there's so much sound from downstairs she can barely discern the voices.

 

It takes a moment for her bleary eyes to comprehend it, but there on the wall of chaos is one of her sketches, pigeons in a fluctuating spiral, a flurry of wings and

movement, a dance, or an act of God. Her stomach makes an awful motion, but her body feels so warm.

 

Mary follows the noise of them all, down the hallway, the red carpeted stairs until she walks into the commotion. And she realises, maybe for the first time they're just… teenagers.

 

Peter and Thomas are debating on the sofa, hard eyes pointed in each other’s direction. Phillip has Jude, a tiny slip of a boy - he can't be older than thirteen - hoisted onto his tall shoulders. Matthew is curled in the corner, headphones shielding them from the world. Andrew and Simon talk in animated Spanish and Igbo on the sofas, never pausing to clarify a word or sentiment. Mary understands every word.

 

Judas is nowhere to be found, and neither is Jesus.

 

She perches on the sofa beside Matthew, because they seem like neutral territory. They look up and smile just slightly. “Welcome to the asylum, sister.”

 

There is deep scar tissue on the side of Matthew’s face, just beneath the sharp cut of platinum hair. Sainthood did not heal it but made it something haunting - like a marble statue, damaged by time but still strikingly beautiful. Mary can't help but wonder if that is why Matthew has such a softness.

 

“I feel like I'm imposing.” _I feel like an imposter._

 

“He likes you,” Matthew smiles, something almost-coy. “You will always have a place among us.”

 

Mary feels her body deflate, like every tight ball of stress in her muscles and sinew has released and even her bones have a fluidity.

 

“I don't know why this feels like home.”

 

Matthew smiles again and offers an earbud. “It does that to you.”

 

*

 

In late afternoon, Thomas jumps up and screams, “Sunset!” Grinning like her face might split open.

 

Matthew and Phillip scramble to the window but Thomas grabs Peter by the arm and pulls her outside, the two of them gripping each other like all the verbal sparring was nothing but play. Mary looks over her shoulder and out the grand sash window to the sky, mingling all colours red, grey, and gold. Pink wisps of cloud whip at the peach sky, fading into a warm yellow at the edge of the horizon. It lights up the whole room like stained glass, Mary’s hands and face dripping with celestial colour. She feels… it _all_ feels spectacular and beautiful and bigger than the whole world.

 

The others, they have their arms clasped tightly around one another, Matthew and Jude tucked into the spaces of Phillip’s body. On the steps she can see Peter and Thomas, twined around one another like vines. Andrew and Simon are collapsed into a pile her body laid out like a blanket over his.

 

Finally standing, trying to get a better look at the descending sun, she sees them. Jesus and Judas, the latter on his back with leaves woven into his curls and the former cradling his legs on his lap, basking in the light as it falls upon the grass.

 

Matthew reaches out with two fingers, pressing into the curve of Mary’s elbow and Phillip very carefully makes space for her, accepting her into the tangle of them. For the first time she thinks she feels something like Holy.

 

*

 

She isn't sure what to do about bed, but slinks upstairs into the room and makes a blanket out of the biggest cardigan she owns. She is sure there must be other rooms in the house, if there are still apostles yet to change, but he gave up his space to her and pinned her soul down onto the walls.

 

She curls into the armchair in the corner. It's a ratty old thing, looks like something hauled in off of the street, but the leather is soft against her skin and easy to sink into as she reads. She brought one book, a beat-up copy of _Orlando,_ because it details change without making her feel like she's splitting at the seams. She still has a copy of the Qur'an in her bag.

 

This, whatever it is she is part of now cannot make her faith an outsider. All that changes is herself around it, how she sees religion not as a guide but as a purpose. To make the world a gentler place.

 

She looks at the quotes scrawled on the wall. Mohammed is there, beside Christian scripture, alongside words from the Talmud.

 

He comes in when she is drawing her fingers along the words, like she could pull that peace and kindness from her fingertips to within.

 

“The bed is yours, by the way.” He runs his fingers through his hair and removes his sunglasses for the first time. She does not expect his eyes. There's no way to describe them, other than how they make her legs quiver, her soul feel disturbed in her chest.

 

“I - I couldn't -”

 

He smiles at her, and she cannot believe he can pass those things around so carelessly. She doesn't think he has any idea what he truly is. “Would you prefer if I was in it with you?”

 

It should sound salacious. Sinful. But it doesn't, not the way his mouth fits around the words.

 

She nods her head again and sinks down from the chair to the mattress, still exhausted after all the sleep she had throughout the day.

 

She slips under the duvet, careful not to touch his body, not to disturb the skin exposed by the sleeves of his vest of the ends of his grey boxers. She couldn't watch him undress, but now she can't help but stare at him, the way he lives inside a body like it's a home and not a house.

 

She says, very quietly, “I think I belong to you.”

 

And he says, just as quietly, “You don't belong to anyone. And I belong to the whole world.”

 

He turns to face her, points those eyes at her again and presses his mouth to her cheek. “It's been unbearable, all this time without you.”

 

She touches the place where his lips connected and falls asleep with uneven breaths.

 

*

 

By morning he is gone again, but she finds him in the kitchen, badly breaking eggs and generally getting in the way.

 

Peter rolls her eyes at him and throws a tea towel in his direction. “Isn't there a shelf for you to fix somewhere?”

 

Judas laughs, loud and deeply and wraps his arms around Jesus’ shoulders. “Don't listen to her. Everything you touch turns to miracles. Be a dear and grab that water and make us some champagne for this orange juice, would you?”

 

Jesus shakes him from his shoulders and takes a pointed bite of toast.

 

Thomas raises one eyebrow and says, “Didn't they say Lucifer was God's favourite angel?”

 

Peter breezes over and swats her lightly on the arm, but it's Phillip who says, “Remember, sister, the past is not our future.”

 

Mary just sits down at the end of the table,  gratefully grabbing the mug of coffee Judas lays down for her and watches all of their lines of intersection through the steam.

 

*

 

Peter and Jesus leave soon after breakfast, to perform a laying of the hands at another terminal ward. She is almost sorry about how the popularity of the ritual has boomed since her stunt at Great Ormond Street. She isn't even sure if she could to it again, or if the universe was simply passing through her like a vessel of healing, a pair of hands to be used.

 

Some of the others also disappear with errands and miracles and runs for shortbread cookies.

 

Not Judas, though. Even she knows that no one wants their miracle performed by the traitor.

 

Still, from the way he lounges with her, talks so brightly about any stray thought that comes to mind, she cannot see a single black mark upon his soul.

 

“Your eyes are doing that thing,” He says, crinkling his own at the edges. “I don't even think you know you're doing it.”

 

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

 

“Sure you do,” he says, fishing his phone out of his pocket. “Say cheese.” He takes it so quick she doesn't have time to think about her face, or the fact that she has so rarely seen it since… well.

 

He turns the picture towards her, and her eyes are solid as flint and in two colours, like a sunset reflected on a turquoise ocean. She looks inhuman. She looks terrifying.

 

He must see how she draws inwards, blood draining from her face. “Mary, Angel, it's okay. We all have that now. The cold touch of the divine. It is what we are, but it is not who we are.”

 

He places his hands on her shoulders again, overwarm through the thin fabric of her jumper, and it sweeps her entire body in a healing calmness.

 

He winks at her and keeps one hand on her shoulder, static but turned down towards her spine. “Hey,” he says, as if the world didn't just turn in reverse. “Do you know how to dance?”

 

*

 

She can't get used to the warmth of his hands as one spans her waist and the other grips her palm tightly. Their bodies are so close that when he breathes heavily their chests brush.

 

“Chin up,” he says, looking down at her with that mischievous shine to his eye. “Just keep watching me.” He steps forward with his left foot forcing her one back as his hips press closer into her space. She mirrors the move, stepping forward and forcing him back, her whole body arched towards his.

 

“Angel, I'm supposed to be leading this dance.” They spring apart for a moment as he throws her to the side, his handprint burning at her waist, but he catches her again, pulls her so she's spinning into his body, his arm and hers curled up at her throat.

 

She looks up at him with a dare in her gaze and he laughs softly. “Perhaps we should start with something a little more gentle.”

 

“And I was just getting the hang of it.” She smiles back and unfurls herself from their twined arms until nothing of them is touching but their fingertips. She feels so at ease with him, like some deep part of her soul has thrown off its reigns and burned wildly through her for his touch and mirthful voice.

 

“A shame that, isn't it?” He swings their arms and starts to sway, even though it doesn't fit the music and damn infectious him, she starts to move, too. She twirls back in and puts her both of her hands on his shoulders and the two of them sway like matching dolls.

 

Someone comes into the room and everything in her body screams to spring apart from him but he keeps looking into her eyes, holding on tightly, and she has to match his dare.

 

“Someone's settling in nicely,” Peter says, a bright point of humour laced through her voice.

 

And if she's back, then -

 

“You match awfully well,” Jesus says, smiling softly from the doorway.

 

“I thought so, too. Judas says, grinning in the other boy's direction. And Mary feels like she's committing some great act of betrayal somehow, by holding him so tightly to her body, but her fingers will not allow her to let go.

 

*

 

She retreats to their bedroom with her sketchpad in hand, but nothing to draw. Her muse hasn't been the same since her awakening. Nothing she draws ever feels divine.

 

She doesn't notice when he comes in, too focused on the lines of the window frame and how they cut across the trees, and if there's anything in there she can find meaning in.

 

“Can I try?” Jesus asks her, gesturing to the pencil she's gripping so tightly the bone aches.

 

“Yes, sure, of course you can.” _I think I'd probably do anything you asked me to._

 

She hands him the notebook and pencil and he looks studiously through the small window, pressing the point of the lead lightly into the paper. “I was never good with this stuff. The creative things. I could assemble a sofa no problem, but I probably couldn't draw the thing afterwards.” He laughs, and her heart melts more for the all the ways he seems so human.

 

“I'm not so great myself, lately.” She leans over, tries to peek, but he tilts the page away from her.

 

“You'll find it again, I promise.” He smiles up at her from beneath his hair, impossible eyes glimmering with possibility.

 

He sticks his tongue between his teeth as he draws, she notices, watching a the lines of him, the way his body moves.

 

“There,” he says, dropping the pencil to the bed and handing back the pad. “Dinner’s almost ready, by the way.”

 

She takes the pad from his hands and almost laughs. A whole tree pulsing with the breeze and he drew a single leaf, curled up and fallen. At least, she thinks that's what it's supposed to be.

 

*

 

She settles in quickly after that. She gets to know their timings, the come-and-go of the day. No one is ready to let her out and perform yet, least of all her, so she spends most days trailing Judas like a small shadow, filling up her time and her space with him.

 

He asks her, when they're sat underneath the willow tree in the garden, the same tree that had born the leaves he'd gotten tangled in his hair on her first day, how long she thinks they have left.

 

“Two years isn't a long time, even with all of our divine intervention.”

 

She doesn't say anything, but she hums _My Generation_ under her breath, because that's the best answer she has.

 

The world is always ending anyway, who wants to watch it burn?

 

He curves a hand around her cheek then, rolls so his weight is almost resting on hers but not quite. “I want to watch it burn, sometimes, does that make me a bad person?”

 

He watches her mouth. “I didn't say that out loud.”

 

“Oh,” he says, without clarifying anything, and brings his mouth to hers.

 

He kisses… he kisses like a wild thing. Like someone who hasn't felt gentleness in so long he must cover himself in it. He parts her mouth slowly but pointedly with his tongue and tastes every life her lips have lived.

 

She can't breathe. Not when he's kissing her. Not even when he pulls back. He has drawn all the breath from her body and stolen it for himself.

 

“Sorry,” he says, smiling and not sorry at all.

 

“Don't be,” she replies and presses her mouth to his jaw.

 

*

 

“I kissed her,” Judas whispers in the dark of the morning, kneeling beside Jesus, Hovering over there, on his side of the bed. “I'm sorry,” he says.

 

Mary's heart jolts painfully.

 

“She just - I just. I had to. There was no way I couldn't, dude she's fucking. In my head.”

 

And, _oh,_   _okay. Oh._

 

Jesus hushes him, and she can hear the sheets rustle. No force of nature could make her turn over, look at them. Then there's another sound, wet like mouths pressing together and her heart must be loud enough to hear but they don't spring apart or pull her under.

 

“You didn't do anything wrong, brother.” Jesus whispers, finally, with wavering breath. “I probably would have done it too.”

 

She doesn't sleep the rest of the night.

 

*

 

She can't stop herself.

 

Even after what she witnessed, she can't stop filling herself with him. (With the both of them.)

 

Sure, she finds space in her day to make half-hearted attempts to steal away with Matthew and Peter, or teaching Jude proper sketching technique, but still. Most of her days are occupied with Judas, watching the way his fingers move across the pages when he reads, dancing with their bodies curled close. He likes to ghost his fingers along her spine, his mouth along the back of her neck.

 

It makes her feel like the kind of girl she's known to be, even if that's never been quite true. She feels like she's waiting for someone to grab her wrist and bring a rock to her bones.

 

She can't help but wonder what the risk would have to be to make her give up the warm addictive feeling of his fingers against her skin.

 

*

 

She notices them more, now. How they steal away, how when Jesus is back at the mansion for a rare minute, Judas is trailing behind him. She wonders what they do in private.

 

If Judas maps out Jesus’ chest the way he does her spine.

 

In bed, beside Jesus, she is even more careful not to touch him. But she wakes up with him twisted around her, his head on her chest, those wisps of hair ticking the delicate skin of her throat. She can't breathe, can feel her heart race desperately beneath his ear.

 

Slowly she draws her fingers across his forehead, trying to jostle him awake, but all she ends up doing is tracing his skin, feeling how much softer it is than it seems. When he does wake, he lightly presses his mouth against her collarbone and stretches up. He goes about his day like it means absolutely nothing.

 

She rolls around in that uncomfortable aching for hours and hours.

 

*

 

Sarah presses her fingers into Mary's shoulders like a massage.

 

“My dear, I think it might be time for you to go out and perform, if you feel up to it.”

 

The world seems to drop away from beneath her feet, but she can feel her head nodding _yes._

 

Jesus comes over and tangles their fingers. “I’ll go with you,” he says, looking over his shoulder to where Judas stands, a hard line to his mouth.

 

She tries not to look at either of them until it's time to bundle into the car.

 

“We'll start you out with what you already know,” Peter says from behind the wheel. “Another laying. There's a little girl who got caught in the crossfire of some kind of gang shit… Things aren't looking good for her, but it's okay. If you can't cope with it we're here with you.”

 

Jesus squeezes her knee, and his hands are warm but not in the familiar way Judas’ always seem to be.

 

She closes her eyes and tries to breathe mindfully between the car and the hospital ward. Still, in the room it is worse than she expects it to be, if not in the way she anticipated.

 

With Jody it had just been her and the ghost driving her hands and the boy who was losing the last of his breath. Here she has the family of the little girl staring up at her with desperate, shining eyes, the nurse staff, the crowd gathered on the hospital steps.

 

But she also has her family.

 

The girl hardly looks like a child but a doll, sliced up and taped together after years of rough play. She doesn't look like she'll survive the night.

 

Not without divine intervention.

 

Closing her eyes, Mary tries to find that thing inside of her, the one that makes her eyes awash with green and gold, the thing that pulses from her hand like sunshine. She breathes like she's pushing the ocean with her breath, like every exhale is pulsing into the little girl's heartbeat.

 

She can feel it rising, a strange unknowable force vibrating between her and the chest of this little girl, feeding into the life force that was so quickly draining. She's flooding with it, overspilling with life again.

 

She can hardly hear over the roaring in her ears, the wild hissing of hospital machinery, the sobs wracking the room like hysteria.

 

When she pulls her hands back Mary can barely stand, and Jesus and Peter catch her together, Jesus cradling her in his arms.

 

“You did it,” he whispers, tipping their foreheads together.

 

Peter runs to deal with the crowd of reporters and he helps her to her feet and fields the questions and panicked thank yous from the child’s parents until they can tumble into a lift together.

 

“You were incredible,” he says, running his fingers through her hair and coming to rest against her temple. “You were…”

 

He closes his eyes, seems to count his breaths out but Mary can't follow along at all, she's so dizzy with power and strangeness and she almost doesn't notice when he kisses her gently, just the once, then catches her as she falls.

 

*

 

They banish her to bed for the next few days, to regain her strength, though everyone drifts in from time to time.

 

Even Thomas, with the wildest of looks in her eyes squeezes her hand and says, “That was sick as _fuck.”_

 

Her boys, though, refuse to leave her side.

 

She drifts in and out of wakefulness and pretends not to hear them fight over her.

 

“She wasn't ready. She only pushed herself because you -”

 

“You didn't see her there. She was. It was stunning.”

 

Judas turns his head into Jesus' shoulder, and she is not afraid to watch them now. She has given so much of herself that they least they can offer her is everything they have.

 

“I'm glad I didn't see.” He says, pressing his mouth to Jesus’ collarbone. “I don't think I would have remembered to breathe.”

 

“You know, brother, we're even, now.” Jesus tilts Judas’ head up to meet his mouth. They kiss searchingly, lovingly, like coming home. She stares rapturously at the way they meet up, all the ways it shouldn't work. All the ways it does.

 

After a moment she clears her throat. “You know,” she says, smiling. “It's been hours since someone kissed me like that.”

 

She isn't sure what reaction she had expected, but thankfully Judas _laughs_ and twines his fingers with hers.

 

“What are we going to do with you?” He asks stroking the back of her palm with those warm, warm hands.

 

Jesus sits on the edge of the bed, smooths the hair away from her face and places a single soft kiss to the hinge of her jaw.

 

“Save the world, I guess,” she says.

 

Jesus smiles. “Or die trying.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> pandering time: if you liked this fic check out my [payhip](https://payhip.com/celestiologies) for more writing or consider buying me a coffee [here](ko-fi.com/lucyhannahryan)
> 
> or just add me on tumblr [@bohemicns](www.bohemicns.tumblr.com)and chat. that too.


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